MIRANSHAH: A suspected U.S. drone fired a missile into a Pakistani village in North Waziristan tribal region early on Thursday leaving scores dead, a foreign news agency witness said, the latest in a series of such attacks in recent weeks.
The strike targeted a village near Waziristan's main town of Miranshah where Jalaluddin Haqqani, a veteran Taliban commander and an old friend of Osama bin Laden, had established a madrasa or religious school and where his extended family used to be living. There was no immediate word on casualties.
"A large number of militants are rushing towards the area in vehicles," the witness told media by telephone from Miranshah.
Twenty-three people, mostly relatives of Haqqani, were killed in a similar attack in the same area in September.
The U.S. forces, frustrated over growing cross-border militant attacks from the Pakistani side, have carried out around a dozen missile strikes and a commando raid in Pakistani tribal areas since the start of September.
A large number of militants have been killed in these attacks but no senior al-Qaeda or Taliban commander is reported to have died so far.
One of the sons of Haqqani had told Reuters that the elderly commander was in Afghanistan when the village was hit in September.
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